Step by Step Guide to Make a Successful Pharma Marketing Plan

The pharmaceutical industry is vast, with several major players trying to push various healthcare products. To achieve success in this industry and stand apart from your competitors, having a strong pharma marketing plan is very important.

Having a marketing plan enables you to identify and anticipate various requirements of customers and provide solutions accordingly. Here is a simple step by step process to understand how to prepare a pharmaceutical marketing plan directed towards your goals:

Understand Your Target Group

Pharma marketing targets two types of audiences. The first one is doctors and clinics, and the second one is the consumer or patient directly. The first step in creating a marketing plan is to understand what your primary target group is.

Doctors are the most important key in determining the success of a pharma product. This is because patients consume medicines that their doctors recommend. When making a pharmaceutical marketing plan, the content used in your marketing material must be very well researched and specific—traditional marketing methods highlighting the uses and features of the product work best. Being highly educated in specific fields of medicine, doctors are most often desensitized to very “savvy” marketing material.

Also read: The New Rules Of Doctor Engagement in the New Normal

If you wish to market to the patients directly, it is important to identify individual needs. The online platform is most effective when it comes to a pharma marketing plan directed to the consumers. Remember that they mostly use search engines to find solutions to any pharma needs.

Create a Detailed Analysis of Your Competitors

Several companies are creating similar products in the pharma industry. A thorough study of your competitors will help you find the missing links that you can fill. Start by analyzing their product and the sales achieved. You can also analyze their website to understand the specific target groups that they are catering to.

Analyzing your competitors will help you understand:

• Successful pharma marketing strategies.
• Strategies that do not get the expected returns on investment.
• The types of products that are in demand among customers.
• Mistakes to avoid when making your marketing plan.

Understand Your Product

With a surge in the number of products being released into the market each year, their differences are becoming less pronounced. Therefore, creating a pharmaceutical marketing plan requires you to understand the minute specifications of your product thoroughly.

Attend events and conferences related to your product. This has an added advantage. When you communicate with doctors, you are equipped with more information. Several medical professionals also attend these conferences and events. This helps you get direct feedback about your product. You also get a chance to build your network.

Set Goals

Every marketing plan must have a goal. For a pharmaceutical marketing plan, the primary goal is the sales you can achieve. That said, your goals should be progressive and achievable.

Goals help you track your progress. They also help you and your team stay motivated. That said, having both short and long term goals is necessary. When the short term goals are achieved, it is an indication that you are doing using the right strategies. If you find that simple, short term goals are hard to achieve, review the strategies, and make changes.

Fix your Budget

Unless you have a set budget in mind for your pharma marketing plan, you will not determine specific goals. If you want to set achievable goals, you must have the necessary funds to invest in advertising and marketing a product. Set aside a monthly budget for marketing each month.

You can also divide your budget across tasks and objectives. In this case, budgets will be determined by the expected ROI.

Make Use of Digital Marketing Techniques

Social media is one of the primary tools for a pharma marketing plan today. This is where you can network and expand your customer base.

Using videos, blogs, and informative posts on various social media platforms helps your product get more attention. Remember, both your target groups are active on social media simultaneously.

Interesting: How Digital Transformation is affecting the Pharma and Healthcare Industry

Make sure that your website is updated with good quality content. Finding the right keywords and optimizing your website for search engines is vital. Search engines are the primary source of information for patients and direct consumers, no doubt. Even medical professionals use search engines when they are trying to learn about any new product in the market. SEO will ensure that you are one step ahead of your competition.

Conclusion

Modern methods like social media and pharma email marketing are extremely useful when you are targeting medical professionals directly. With their busy schedules, traditional methods like meeting them in person are harder today. Nevertheless, you have personalized, yet non-invasive methods like e-mail marketing to help you reach out to them.

To know more about successful pharma digital marketing techniques and to leverage our proven expertise in doctor marketing, feel free to get in touch with our
MD Vikram Kotnis directly at vikram@amuratech.com